Posted on 11/02/2012 at 15:39:53  |  Reply  |  Report Abuse |  0

Only I can judge God. I is you if you choose to be.

Using the term --- I am here means you. This applies to all of us. You are ( I ) to you as I am I to me. Only you then can judge the God construct that you see as you evaluate what you know of God.

Jesus said that at the end of days he would return. He meant in spirit only. Not a physical manifestation. He also said that the time of the end was at hand and that the temple of God was within each of us. The tern spirit represents, the spirit of the law, what is written in the hearts, ---- God in other words, ---- is defined as laws and rules and such as they are the only thing you can follow at all times, ---- and these are set by you and you are in effect ruling yourself in terms of following the God construct you have developed.

Jesus is telling you that you and your heart are the only things of importance in terms of leadership as it is the rules you have accepted as worthy of following. Jesus warned that at end times there would be a number of Jesus’ to choose from and morality is what you will have to choose from.

That is why I think it important to evaluate what Jesus said and determine if it is worthy and moral or not.

Jesus Christ. Madman or something worse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4QXOgVfY9k&feature=player_embedded

Below, Bishop Spong speaks of basically redefining Christianity. Going from a church or religious thinking, to a more spiritual or heart felt thinking. I also urge Christianity to change because it is now too immoral to ignore with today’s mentality. It’s overall policies are immoral in my view. The God of war must die and Jesus declared the full and only God that is required and that the noble lie of politics should be revoked to let all know that the God you likely know was always a myth. This may be a good time for you to contemplate such a move as many Christians haves rejected the O.T. God and only focus on Jesus and loving policies.

Bishop Spong speaks well to this issue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AfFcAmx-Ro&feature=relmfu

Apotheosis means just recognizing that you are on a journey of being your own God. Some few will have help from God on this through a real apotheosis but only the very few it seems. You cannot get away from that fact so you may as well forget about fantasy, miracles and magic. They were never real and you are the strongest force you will ever know. After all, who but you can make you want to do anything voluntarily? There is no other force that can do this and therefore you are God in the real sense of being master of yourself. If that does not compute with you then remember that A & E became as Gods, God’s own words, and yours is the same birth rite. Throw it away if you wish. You cannot reject the knowledge of good and evil so I cannot fathom why you would throw away the fact that you as well can become as Gods.

The moral of Jesus and his sacrifice is that we should accept being God, and ruling ourselves even against a government if needs be. Become archetypal Moses and face government and declare that it faces one as great as itself. That is what being a free man is all about.

The time of the end is when Jesus becomes your God on earth, ---- again this is you, --- who takes the place of the mythical heavenly God of war. Jesus/you, as the way, the man’s way of judging first, not some absentee God’s unknown standard. Your covenant with yourself is to be the new covenant. Man answering to man and himself. Not to some unknown God.

This clip from J. Haidt shows that we instinctively share God’s morals. In this we are truly Gods and children of God.

http://blog.ted.com/2008/09/17/the_real_differ/

I am God because I am the only one who is capable of judging the God I know.
You are a God in your own rite as you are the only one who is capable of judging the God you know.

The Noble Lie is firmly in place and manipulating your thinking. Discard it. In this day and age we do not need it the way we may have in the past.

The Noble Lie.
In politics a noble lie is a myth or untruth, often, but not invariably, of a religious nature, knowingly told by an elite to maintain social harmony or to advance an agenda.

As a Gnostic Christian, this theology/philosophy is quite natural to me and can be for all people.

Try thinking as the God that you are. Stop being a sheep and rise to your true inheritance as a shepherd. That is the message Jesus wants you to recognize.

Regards
DL

P.S.
Listen to Jesus and hear for the first time in your life.
Ps 82:6 I said, "You are gods, And all of you are sons of the Most High.
Hosea 1:10 Ye are the sons of the living God.
Do you think that sons of God are destined to be sheep or shepherds?
Jesus was here to empower us. Not enslave us. Do not waste what he gave.

Posted on 08/17/2012 at 17:27:13  |  Reply  |  Report Abuse |  0

Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
And if you cannot, why would God punish you?

Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by putting forward their free will argument and placing all the blame on mankind.
That usually sounds like ----God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy. Such statements simply avoid God's culpability as the author and creator of human nature.

Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.

If all do evil/sin by nature then, the evil/sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not do evil/sin. Can we then help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?

Having said the above for the God that I do not believe in, I am a Gnostic Christian naturalist, let me tell you that evil and sin is all human generated and in this sense, I agree with Christians, but for completely different reasons. Evil is mankind’s responsibility and not some imaginary God’s. Free will is something that can only be taken. Free will cannot be given not even by a God unless it has been forcibly withheld.

Much has been written to explain evil and sin but I see as a natural part of evolution.

Consider.
First, let us eliminate what some see as evil. Natural disasters. These are unthinking occurrences and are neither good nor evil. There is no intent to do evil even as victims are created. Without intent to do evil, no act should be called evil.
In secular courts, this is called mens rea. Latin for an evil mind or intent and without it, the court will not find someone guilty even if they know that they are the perpetrator of the act.

Evil then is only human to human when they know they are doing evil and intend harm.
As evolving creatures, all we ever do, and ever can do, is compete or cooperate.
Cooperation we would see as good as there are no victims created. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim. We all are either cooperating, doing good, or competing, doing evil, at all times.

Without us doing some of both, we would likely go extinct.

This, to me, explains why there is evil in the world quite well.

Be you a believer in nature, evolution or God, you should see that what Christians see as something to blame, evil, we should see that what we have, competition, deserves a huge thanks for being available to us. Wherever it came from, God or nature, without evolution we would go extinct. We must do good and evil.

There is no conflict between nature and God on this issue. This is how things are and should be. We all must do what some will think is evil as we compete and create losers to this competition.

These links speak to theistic evolution.

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=1205

http://www.youtube.com/user/ProfMTH#g/c/6F8036F680C1DBEB

If theistic evolution is true, then the myth of Eden should be read as a myth and there is not really any original sin.

If the above is not convincing enough for you then show me where in this baby evil lives or is a part of it’s nature and instincts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBW5vdhr_PA

Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
And if you cannot, why would God punish you?

Regards
DL

Posted on 05/15/2012 at 10:32:24  |  Reply  |  Report Abuse |  0

Is hell anything like -- do unto others and love the sinner?

Some more enlightened Christians are trying to mature Christianity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF6I5VSZVqc

The Christian invention of hell and Christian strong desire for it to exist, shows a hatred that is quite deep within the Christian tribal soul.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv_rmQuagpY&feature=player_embedded

Jesus would not cast the first stone yet Christians adamantly demand that he cast the last killing stone called hell.

You will reap what you sow Christian.

This will be you unless you repent from your hating ways. You are corrupting Jesus and his good archetypal name.

I predict this following for you if you do not lose your hate for those who just happen by accident of birth to not believe as you do. Beware.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3LNL6wKhXA

Regards
DL

Posted on 05/14/2012 at 11:17:27  |  Reply  |  Report Abuse |  0

Comprehending God Poe, the Bible and Candid style.

Poe said...
If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being? If we cannot understand him in his objective creatures, how then in his substantive moods and phases of creation?

This is basically what scriptures say when they say to seek God in the heavens. Nature IOW.

These views are what led to my apotheosis and I endorse them wholeheartedly.

When I was a seeker, before I found this clip below. I had concluded that reality was in the best and only state that it could be in. This best state included nature as well as man within it.

When this was written, most thought it to just be a cynical view of life but I think it is quite true and irrefutable, based on the anthropic principle and the notion that a God would start things of in a good way as scriptures indicate for Eden and that that best way would be self-perpetuating because I could not imagine a God using creation as a make work project that he would have to tweak every now and then as scriptures indicated that he did.

Candide

"It is demonstrable that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPClzIsYxvA

The above quote should make sense to both believers and non-believers alike, if you see nature always doing the best it can with all the conditions at hand taken into account.

I would like to stay away from discussions of God’s existence here because I think any such discussion would be speculative nonsense as none of our opinions of God is true knowledge and none of it can be proven until he actually shows up. Even as I do not believe in a creator God, I will not argue with those who give credit to him instead of nature and evolution. It is what is here that I would ask you to focus on.

Just looking at nature and mankind then at this point in time, can we agree that what we have is the best of all possible worlds, given all the conditions at hand?

To set you on the tract and mindset that I developed, I would like you to think of the day you were born.
Can you say that given all the conditions at hand back then, your DNA and all other conditions, nature produced you to the very best condition that she could muster?
If yes, consider that the next day let’s say, after you began to learned and found the teat and continued learning and developing, right till today, that the initial best you, in the best of all possible world, are continuously aging as the best that you can possible be, given all the conditions at hand.
Not perfect, but the best you can possibly be.

Are you living in the best of all possible world and are you today, the best that nature can produce, given all the conditions at hand?

Regards
DL

Posted on 05/10/2012 at 07:43:30  |  Reply  |  Report Abuse |  0

Jesus forgiving sin is unjust to Victim.

Sin, by it’s very nature must have a victim. Without a victim, there is no sin.

The one sinned against has the first right of forgiveness.

If Jesus usurps that right then I think it would be unjust.

Closure is being denied the victim thus victimizing is twofold.

Jesus would not condone such a thing.

Secular law now demands a victim assessment report before sentence is given.

To think that Jesus would ignore this requirement is unthinkable.

This means that, “Why have you forsaken me? “, is answered by God with; because what you do is immoral. You deny the victim her or his rights. It is also unjust to punish the innocent instead of the guilty. In fact, that notion is insane.

In the scenario shown here the victim is ignored thus showing the flaw in the judge’s ruling, if he accepts substitutionary atonement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqP_fjBkwxc&feature=related

Regards
DL

Posted on 05/02/2012 at 17:06:59  |  Reply  |  Report Abuse |  0

Your God is your ultimate barrier to finding the Godhead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Eoxt1hRm9c&feature=fvst

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGx4IlppSgU

The Jews, the true authority and interpreters of Eden, saw mankind’s gain of knowledge as an elevation in their struggle to understand God. Israel [as understood by Hebrews, = he strives with God]. Strive can be read as to mean to work either with or against. Jews equated God more with a source of knowledge than a source of command that must be obeyed. This is shown by archetypal Moses ignoring God’s law of divorce.

Being a Gnostic Christian, my view goes to following the Jewish view for two basic reasons. They have more authority over the O. T. than Christians and secondly, they give our creation, beginning and God a happy ending for our passage through Eden. True evil had yet to manifest itself to that point in time.

Christians on the other hand, with their view of Eden as man’s fall, cannot see a perfect heaven without evil. God fails on this issue and admits it by casting Satan out.

Christians cannot see a perfect Eden on earth without evil. God fails on this issue and admits it by casting Adam and Eve out.

In Noah’s day, God repented from his sins. He missed the mark and admits it by destroying most of mankind and animal kind with an immoral genocide. God fails on this issue as well.

Did the Jews win in their striving against God to a point where they could judge him?
I think so thanks to Moses and the divorce laws.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx7irFN2gdI

We cannot today know why Christianity reversed some of the Jewish thinking when embracing the O. T. and it’s God and going from man’s elevation to man’s fall.

Should Christians consider following that good Jewish example and do as other cultures have done as shown by Joseph Campbell and seek a messiah the way most Jews do?

If not, then Christians will have to learn to live in a world where their God can be accurately described like this.

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
? Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Dawkins and most Jews call the bible fiction. Jews can thus get around this accurate description of God by just admitting the truth. It is all myth and metaphor. Literalist and fundamental Christians cannot and I think that over time this rather ugly God will kill Christianity.

At one time the Christian God of the gaps may have had a role to play for us but man has moved on. Christians should perhaps do the same and seek their true God.

Regards
DL

Posted on 05/01/2012 at 11:15:51  |  Reply  |  Report Abuse |  0

Can God love?

We are told that the mythical bible God is love or the epitome of love.

Archetypal Jesus said that we would know his people by the love, deeds and actions they showed others.

Jesus gave us examples of the deeds and works. Feed the poor, love all our neighbours, do not sin and many others.

Love then, seems to Jesus, to be something that must be shown by deeds, actions and works to be alive and true love. Love, like faith, without works is dead. Both St. James and Jesus agree on this.

It follows then that if God is not doing something to show this love then the love for man expressed in scriptures is wrong and God cannot love.

You are in the image of God. When you love someone you show them that love by works and deeds. This is how the recipient of that love knows it is there and that allows for reciprocity. You will agree that without reciprocity, true love cannot exist between two individuals. We must do things for each other for true love to exist.

Imagine what those you love would think if you never did anything to express your love. Imagine what you would think of the love of others towards you if they never did anything to show they loved you. See what I mean. Love always must have deeds to be real and true and reciprocity must be at play.

Love then has no choice but to be expressed if it is true love.

We are told that God loved his son so much that he planned to have him sacrificed even before the earth was created. This human sacrifice or any other human sacrifice, voluntary or not, is immoral and the notion that it is good to sacrifice an innocent victim to give the guilty believers a free ride into heaven is a completely self-gratifying notion and is completely immoral. One does not show love for someone by having them sacrificed for the sins of others when God himself stated that we are all responsible for our own salvation and cannot put that responsibility of the shoulders of a scapegoat Jesus.

Does love need deeds and works to be expressed?

Have you seen God express his love for us lately?

Regards
DL

These following speak to this issue if you wish to view them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMXoPhgTkuY&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcO4TnrskE0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP7SPJllNoc

Posted on 03/31/2012 at 13:56:25  |  Reply  |  Report Abuse |  0

What does in God’s image mean? He created Adam & Eve without a moral sense.

I take, in God’s image, to refer to God’s and our mental image and not the physical. God does not look like us in any way. He and his form is quite alien to us.

Genesis shows that Adam & Eve were created without the moral sense that would make them like Gods. That being the case, they had to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil to be in God’s mental image. That is without a doubt a requirement to the development of a moral sense and is confirmed by God after Adam and Eve disobeyed his command to stay dumb and without a moral sense.

If they were created in God’s image then they would have already had the moral sense that comes from the knowledge of good and evil and would therefore not have been tempted by Satan to eat of the tree of knowledge because they would have had that knowledge already. This would also mean that God was punishing them unjustly.

One must conclude from these biblical facts, that God did not make mankind in his image.

The only other logical alternative is that God does not have a moral sense and that he too, like Adam and Eve, was basically as dumb as a cow.

Could that be why God is shown as doing other immoral things in scriptures?

The two main ones that come to mind is God having his own son murdered for the forgiveness of sin when there was no real need to and the genocide of Noah’s day.

Does being in God's image mean not having a moral sense?

Regards
DL

Posted on 01/31/2012 at 11:22:37  |  Reply  |  Report Abuse |  0

Who are more moral? Men or women?

I am not an atheist but am a man who, thanks to apotheosis, believes himself to have high morals. Perhaps even superior to women.

I will take the Jewish view of Eden as man’s elevation as opposed to the Christian view that Eden was man’s fall. I do this because the Jewish view was the initial view of their scriptures. I give their view more authority than I do to Christianity. That Jewish view was later reversed by Christianity. Why Christianity did this is not clear.

http://www.mrrena.com/misc/judaism2.php

For this mental exercise, I say women are more moral than men. I take this view because teaching a topic is the best way to learn it, and that most of the child rearing/teaching in that day was done by women. Women then, teaching children their first morals, would also teach themselves morals faster than what men would.

I do not read scriptures literally but will use the literal view and my logic trail and progression through Eden as if I do.

Eve was first to eat of the tree of knowledge, and as scriptures states, became as God. That is, she developed the same moral sense as God. She then recognized that instead of leaving Adam to follow God’s instruction to not eat, she chose, with her new wisdom, to have Adam also eat of the tree of knowledge. Thus both were elevated to having a moral sense.

Is the Jewish view the correct one?

Who should lead mankind in religious and political thinking?

Who are more moral? Men or women?

Regards
DL

Posted on 01/23/2012 at 14:50:53  |  Reply  |  Report Abuse |  0

Does God ---- Do unto others?

There are many instances in scriptures where God does not follow the golden rule.

Ezekiel 18:20
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

In the sacrifice of Jesus, God demanded that Jesus bear the sins of the wicked who will repent.

This is hardly doing unto others or following the advice of scriptures.
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Matthew 25:41 (Jesus speaking): Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Romans 12:21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Hell can hardly be called a good thing. This again is hardly Jesus doing unto others or following the advice of scriptures.
-----------------------------------

Does the God you know follow the golden rule?

How can he be doing so when a good God would find a good and moral way to convert instead the draconian methods he seems to use that go against the golden rule and his own good advice in his scriptures?

Regards
DL